Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Notable Quote: "The circles of my writing don't close, they're spirals, journeying on, out of the garden of my childhood into even early times and directly into my present."

Read this if you enjoyed: Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters

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First line: "'For example, I never officially told you. I just came over for coffee one day wearing makeup, with a box of Lindt & Sprüngli (the medium-sized, not the small ones like usual), and then came to Christmas dinner in a skirt."

Summary (spoiler free): The narrator pieces together patchy childhood memories with scenes and ruminations from their adult life as they navigate familial trauma, gender, sexuality, class, and personal identify as a means of coping with their grandmother's worsening dementia.

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De l'Horizon previously won the German book prize in 2022 for their novel Blutbuch, which shares many similar plot points and themes to their new release. While I haven't picked up Blutbuch yet, I can only imagine it deserves that accolade, because De l'Horizon's skill as a deeply personal, intimate, and highly specific storyteller shines here in my introduction to them. I thought this book was a memoir for the overwhelming majority of the time due to its extreme specificity.

Sea, Mothers, Swallow, Tongues is, at its heart, a book about memory- personal and cultural, positive and negative. It's a book about how memory shapes the very language we use, the associations we build with words, and how that affects the terms we understand and piece together to explain new ideas. The title itself is a reference to the fluidity of language: "sea," "mother," "swallow," and "tongue" all associated together in the intersections where different languages, dialects, and personal idiosyncrasies meet. They are part of the Meer-language (or "mother language") that the narrator refers to often, the remembered words and culture unique to their family.

While being incredibly linguistically rich and interesting, this book also touches on how one uses language to define what- at least to the narrator- has not been defined. The fluidity of language is used as a means for the narrator to explain and process their own burgeoning gender identity. Not a man but not a woman either, and it's in the Meer-language that this is explored and expanded on.

This book is for anyone interested in the non-binary experience, linguistics, or family sagas. While its non-linear and almost stream-of-consciousness story telling may throw off readers used to a more direct, linear framework, the emotional honesty and complexity of the ideas expressed kept me reading to the end.

Seeing as language is an important part of this book and story, I must preface this by saying I read an English translation, given to me through netgalley.


This book is a unique, and quite challenging, read. It documents the struggles of the author, through journey with sexuality, gender identity, and tackling generational trauma.

Initially, I found it difficult get into it, but once I stuck with it and kept reading, it became easier and easier to follow. It is fascinating, how the author expresses themselves and their experiences through interesting and unique metaphors.

More than once I found myself moved and identifying with various parts of their journey.

I feel that some of the impact of the book might be lost in translation. I don't doubt it was a lot more powerful in the Kim de l'Horizon's mother tongue. Yet emotions are a universal language that can be felt by all, so I would say it is definitely still worth a read.

Though this took me a week to get through, I am so glad I read it. I experienced so many emotions whilst reading, and, honestly, it comforted me and made me feel more human. I think it would be overly simplistic to say that this book is the author grappling with being nonbinary, with discovering who they are, but that theme certainly exists within. More than anything, I identified with the parts of this novel which dealt with coming to terms with who your family members are, who they aren’t, and how you are supposed to find you way and place in the world. I cried so much during the last ten percent, feeling both the beauty and pain of existing as one in a long line of ancestors who came before. This was, at time, hard to get through, but well worth the work in the end. Beautiful!

Haunting, lyrical, and unexpectedly sensual. This semi-autobiographical novel ruminated on the intersection of language, storytelling, and identity in such a unique way. I'm fortunate enough to have a friend that's a native German speaker, so hearing her thoughts on all of the Bernese German vs traditional German was so interesting. The childhood sections, the obfuscation of gender, felt reminiscent of my own memories growing up nonbinary and trans - you don't always known the exact way you're different but you know that you don't always feel like a person.

How do you write a story in a new language?